


the secrets we keep

by blindbatalex



Series: disco mob [2]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Background - Freeform, Charlie McAvoy/Jake Debrusk, Historical Inaccuracy, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-11-01 23:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20542331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/pseuds/blindbatalex
Summary: Life with a 1920s mob never gets dull when you accidentally time traveled back from the 21st century but even Jake finds himself out of his depth when Pasta asks him to save the life of an enemy.





	the secrets we keep

**Author's Note:**

> \- So this is part of a very loose but very dear AU, aka the disco mob AU, that until now has only existed in tumblr drabbles and headcannons. You can find all of them [@discomob](https://discomob.tumblr.com/).  
\- The gist of it though, is that the Bruins as well as the Maple Leafs are 1920s gangs based in Massachusetts. Jake is a paramedic from the 21st century and he accidentally time-travels there, gets taken in by the Bruins and becomes their doctor.  
\- The Leafs kidnap him a few months before the events in this fic following a misunderstanding, and while he gets rescued, he is a little bitter about it, you know?

Jake loves Charlie and he loves how far that they have come – that they are dating. It’s probably the most meaningful romantic relationship he has ever had. But Charlie is a neurotic son of a bitch when it comes to Jake’s safety and especially since he has been kidnapped by the Leafs. He has been teaching Jake how to shoot a gun and how to fight but he still prefers to keep Jake in his eyesight every time he goes outside. They have talked about it, or rather Jake yelled at him a couple of times Charlie went too far, so he is better at giving Jake space these days but still.

Still, there is no way he would let Jake come to the docks to the pickup of a liquor shipment, no matter how ordinary a pickup it is- 

That is, if he was in town. 

He has, you see, gone away to New York on business and like a shark that has smelled blood, Jake has coaxed and cajoled the guys to let him come to the pick-up the moment he heard about it and after hours of pestering he has won.

As Pasta throws him behind their car and barks at him to stay there, he thinks that maybe he should have listened to the Charlie-voice in the back of his head and stayed home. Because it turns out they are not alone: somehow the Leafs learned where and when they were picking up their shipment and decided to spoil the party. 

They are presently shooting at them and Pasta, Brandon, and Danton are shooting back - Pasta shielded behind the front door of the car the two of them took here, the car Jake is hiding behind, and Brandon and Danton shielded behind the front doors of the second car, some distance away from them. 

Jake watches the flashes in the dimly lit dock as the bullets get fired from various guns and as they bounce off metal. The shots almost sound like rain – rain on a tin roof – if Jake could close his eyes and convince himself of it. He wishes he stayed home.

He keeps his eyes open, though, and thus sees the moment a genius idea grips Danton. Danton stops firing for a moment; his eyes go wide and his lips part, Jake can see it even in the terrible light. He wonders if he has run out of ammunition but in the next moment, Danton rolls on the ground from behind the door to his right and shoots at the fuel tank of the Leafs car closest to them, over and over again, with all he’s got.

Sure enough – and thankfully before he can get shot – it works. The car blows up – the explosion would throw Jake off his feet if he wasn’t crouching right behind a car as is. The light from it is blinding but he sees two Leafs get engulfed in it, and another, standing by a second car closer to the harbor get swept off his feet and thrown into the water by the impact of the explosion. The guy hits his head on a metal bar on the way and he is limp by the time he hits the water.

Immediately Pasta darts forward. 

He sprints and dives into the harbor, which - given that it’s November is probably not the smartest idea that he has had. Ahead of them the car is ablaze, flames rising high into the sky. Jake focuses on the faint ringing in his ears and decides that those are not human screams that he hears.

Brandon runs to him, has to shake him once before Jake can tear his eyes away from the light, from the figures dancing in it. 

“Are you alright?”

He is shouting.

Jake nods because he is. It takes a couple of tries for any sound to make it past his throat.

“Yeah.”

Brandon’s eyes whip around - to his left, to the right, and back at Jake.

“Where is Pasta?”

Jake gestures in the general direction of the water.

“He ran- he ran to the harbor.”

Brandon nods, whether because that makes more sense to him than it does to Jake, or because he can’t process things well right now either, Jake has no idea.

“Cops are going to be here in a few minutes,” he tells Jake. “Me and Danton will finish loading the rest of the booze to the truck. You take Pasta and head back to the compound.” He pauses to give him a hard look. “Can you do that?”

Jake tells him that he can and that must be good enough for Brandon because with a nod he turns back and runs in the direction he came from.

_Take Pasta and head to the compound._ Right. All Jake has to do is to fetch him from his evening swim and hope he doesn’t get shot in the process. He can do that.

He starts towards the harbor, in the direction Pasta took off. Pasta finds him before he can get there. He grips Jake’s shoulders, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. He is dripping with water from head to toe and there is a wild look in his eyes.

“Save him,” he pleads all in one breath, “I need you to save him. He is not breathing.”

***

Jake is going to ask who but Pasta pulls his arm before he can, and not particularly gently. Jake follows and sure enough, where concrete gives off to dirty harbor water below, lies a young man on the ground - their age - limp. Jake crouches beside him. Hair as golden as Pasta’s crowns his head. There is a bloody wound on his temple. He is drenched like Pasta and Pasta is correct that he is not breathing - when Jake checks he can’t find a pulse either.

He has revived drowning victims before and he sets to work. He is not a particularly religious man but every time he has to do CPR he mutters a quick prayer first, asks God in a single thought to let him keep this patient on earth just a little longer - a habit at this point. Pasta is on his knees on the other side of the man, holding onto the man’s shoulder and white as a sheet of paper, like Jake has never seen him before.

God listens to him today, thankfully, and the man starts coughing about half a minute of chest compressions later. 

Jake helps him turn to his side as he retches and coughs more, tells him he is alright, and rubs at his back. He offers another prayer, this time of thanks, and it’s all fine and well until the guy tilts his head up and looks at Jake. Immediately his face scrunches up in a frown and his hand flies to his side - for his gun Jake realizes - thank fuck it doesn’t seem to be there anymore - and thank fuck Pasta’s fingers close around the man’s wrist before he can elbow Jake, in the ribs.

“Hey. Will, Will he is here to help.” 

Pasta has been frozen to his spot until now, watching, but this seems to bring him crashing back into the present. The man - whose name is Will apparently - looks up at him and stops trying to fight Jake. Pasta takes over, drawing the man close to his chest and Jake realizes, that’s a Leaf right there in Pasta’s arms.

He must be the guy Jake saw get thrown into the harbor and hit his head on the way. Part of the organization that kidnapped Jake, beat up Jake, is the reason Jake wakes up even now trembling in the dark from one nightmare after another. He has lost count of the nights he gripped Charlie’s arm so hard his fingers left bruises in the morning, the nights he buried himself close to Charlie and lay awake until the morning unable to fall back asleep, and Pasta is cradling this man in his arms, rocking both of them back and forth, telling him he is okay.

Jake huffs out a breath, ready to say something though what, he doesn’t know, but a police siren in the distance cuts off his thoughts. He remembers what Brandon said and with alarm rises to his feet.

Pasta looks up at him, confused, and Jake can’t believe _he_ \- the resident dumbass - is the one who is explaining, telling them what they need to do.

“The police. We need to get out.”

*

They help Pasta’s friend into the backseat of the car. Jake sits next to the guy, the medic in him overpowering the Bruin. He seems fine enough, considering – he is able to walk with minimal support and sit upright and knows who the president is and what day of the week it is when Jake asks. The gash on his temple is bleeding a lot though so Jake tears off a piece of his shirt and tells the guy to press it to the wound.

He makes eye contact with Pasta on the rear view window. 

“Where are we going?”

Surely they are not driving back home with this man in the car and Pasta doesn’t look like he intends to drop him off anytime soon. 

“To a safehouse,” Pasta replies, “what do you need to treat him?”

_Thank you for asking whether I’m okay treating a Leaf or if I have, I don’t know, five thousand moral conflicts_, Jake allows himself to think bitterly, just for a moment.

Given the dive he and Pasta both took into the harbor on this fine November evening with ice covering every puddle, they will need to warm both of them up. The gash on the man’s temple needs stitches but thanks to his foresight he already has a first-aid bag in the car and to the extent the man has any intracranial bleeding or develops complications from drowning, there is not much he can do without modern medicine. 

He omits the last part and tells Pasta of the first two. Pasta nods and tells him that the house has dry clothes and a fireplace ready to be lit.

Jake takes the man’s pulse again - it’s a little fast but regular and strong - and looks out the window at the outskirts of the city passing them by, not wanting to think about the Leafs or that warehouse they kept him in, how cold he was and how alone.

* 

A proper exam confirms his suspicions. The man has a mild concussion - lucky given the hit he took - and his breathing is fine. He doesn’t talk to Jake as Jake cleans the gash and stitches it up, and Jake in turn only asks him the kinds of questions you are supposed to ask someone who hit his head and almost drowned. Given how dirty the harbor is, infection is an obvious concern, but there isn’t much Jake can do if he tried without access to any antibiotics, except to pray. Which maybe, he should leave that to Pasta.

Pasta loves this man, that much is clear. From the day they met, Jake has thought of him as nothing but loyal and brave and kind even as he is a goofball. The fireplace casts shadows on the wall that dance and waver with the crackling fire. If they had a mole in their organization Jake would never have thought of it to be Pasta.

“I need to talk to you,” he says when he is done bandaging the man’s wound. Up until then, Pasta has been sitting in a chair by the foot of the bed, watching. He hasn’t said a word. Now he rises to his feet and follows Jake into the hallway.

*

Jake closes the door behind him and squares up to Pasta. 

“Do you work for the Leafs? Are you the reason they knew about the pickup tonight?”

“No.”

There is no hesitation in Pasta’s answer. His voice does not waver - he holds Jake’s gaze and he looks a lot older than he is in the stark light of the single, naked light bulb in the hallway. 

Then again, it’s not like he would just tell Jake if he is working for them. He could kill Jake when they are done here, throw his body in a ditch and tell everyone it was the cops, or the Leafs, or an accident. No one would suspect a thing.

“I wouldn’t come to the pickup myself if I was,” Pasta adds frowning. “I wouldn’t let William.”

William.

Jake gestures towards the door.

“You love that man.” 

It comes out as an accusation. Which, yeah, it is. It is an accusation. 

Yet again, Pasta does not hesitate. 

“I do.”

Jake sucks in a sharp breath. He doesn’t know how to respond to that. There is so much he wants to say but words get tangled in his lungs, don’t make it past his throat. 

Pasta speaks before he can figure it out.

“Is he going to be alright?” 

Pasta’s voice is quieter now, and he is looking at Jake with the same hope and fear he has seen on the faces of more family members than he can count, desperate for Jake, for someone, to reassure them that their loved one will make it.

It catches Jake off-guard, takes something out of him. 

He frowns and rattles out potential concerns alongside the qualification that there isn’t much he can do if Will develops any complications. 

“But he is doing fine for now,” he adds, in his professional paramedic voice that wants to soothe without giving false hope. “An infection is likely to take time to set in but as far as concussion and drowning related complications go we should know within the next few hours.”

“Until dawn then,” Pasta says when Jake is done.

There is this grim determination in his eyes, as if he will bring on dawn by himself, dragging it by its collar if necessary, with Will still in one piece. 

* 

Then a shiver wracks Pasta’s body. 

Jake can hear his teeth chattering before he grits his jaw shut. On any other day, he would be hugging himself and rubbing his arms and complaining about how fucking cold he is, trying to steal someone else’s second layers. But he doesn’t even acknowledge it now, just closes his eyes until the worst of it passes. 

It reminds Jake that he has a second patient right now, at risk of hypothermia, and it’s fucking freezing in this hallway. It spurs him to action.

He re-opens the door and gestures inside with his head where it’s warm.

“Come on,” he says without looking Pasta in the eye. “We need to get you under the covers too.”

*

The night crawls by, one dragging minute at a time. Jake feeds the fire when it falters. Pasta and the man talk to each other in low, hushed tones, on and off – in a Scandinavian language that might be Norwegian. One time he turns towards them, he pretends not to see Pasta tucking away a strand of hair behind the other man’s ear – how reverent his fingers are.

He would like to keep Will awake or at least wake him up every couple of hours given his concussion but there is so little he can do if something is wrong that when he and Pasta fall asleep in each others’ arms he lets them be. 

He stares at the fire and thinks about Charlie, and thinks about home, and frappucinos. 

There is this taste in his mouth, like rust, like blood, that he can’t seem to wash away. He thought he knew Pasta – how he likes his coffee, and his fear of anyone doing anything to his teeth, how quiet and deadly he is with a knife. This man, this Leaf he has never seen in his life before, would be dead if he stayed home, he might die just yet, and it seems as if Pasta’s heart beats with his.

He doesn’t know how to make sense of it.

“Is it dawn?” Pasta croaks out, voice heavy with sleep and words slurring. It startles Jake. A glance outside tells him it is. 

Pasta sits up then, quick as lightning and his eyes suddenly wide, and shakes the man who is still sleeping next to him.

“William. Hey Will. Come on, wake up!”

“Jesus Christ.” The man sits up with a jump, swinging out his arm, and Pasta has to duck to get out of its way. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he grumbles and Pasta flashes him and then Jake the biggest smile. He looks like a man who has just been told he won the lottery, a kid let loose in a candy shop. His relief is a physical thing radiating from him in waves, enveloping every single corner of the room.

“How are you feeling?” Jake asks a frazzled but very lucid Leaf by the looks of it. Jake wants to listen to his lungs but he seems to be breathing just fine, no wheezing, no rattling.

Will glares at Pasta. 

“Like I have been woken up from sleep by a mad-man.” 

When Pasta laughs Jake doesn’t join him, but he does smile, just a little bit. 

***

They drop Will off in a nondescript corner in South Boston with instructions for house rest for at least a week and to ease himself back into physical activity gently. 

“You need to look after yourself because I don’t want to deal with Pasta moping for the rest of my life,” Jake says sternly. It’s the nicest thing he has said to the man and he doesn’t think he is imagining the faint blush that spreads across Pasta’s cheeks and definitely not the way he smiles and looks at the floor.

Outside sky is just coming back to life in pale pastels of sunrise.

“I met him when I was fourteen,” Pasta says behind the steering wheel, his eyes fixed straight ahead on the street. “I’d lost my dad in the war, my mom to the fever. I’d seen this ad in a magazine for Sweden - people looked so happy in it and I didn’t have anyone - anything - left tying me to Prague. He didn’t have anything much either. He’d heard all these stories about America. _The land of opportunity._ He’d whisper them to me at night, under the covers, the life we could build there.”

Words are tumbling out of him, raw and uneven, this isn’t a story he has told to many people before. Jake lets him take his time and does not interrupt.

“We came here and it was - we still didn’t have anything but I had him and it was enough.” Pasta laughs, a sound entirely devoid of humor. “Then one night I got mugged. Except I didn’t have a single quarter on me so they beat me up and left me for dead instead.”

Pasta is a great shot but he is positively lethal with even a butter knife and the thought of someone beating him up is a strange one.

“Bergy found me. That’s what they told me, I don’t remember. It was a month before I could even get out of bed and by the time I was well enough to track William down Leafs had taken him in. They gave him food, a place to sleep. A debt of gratitude like that - and a debt like mine - you don’t just shake it off.” 

He pauses and looks at Jake. His exuberant joy from when he first realized Will was going to be okay is gone - he looks so tired. “I should have died that night,” he says quietly as his eyes flick back onto the road. “Sometimes I wish I did.”

“David.”

Jake puts his hand over Pasta’s on the gear shifter. He wants to be able to offer more comfort, do more, but-

“He was dead,” Pasta continues, changing the subject before he can. His voice cracks, just a little, but Jake knows he won’t let himself cry, not in front of him. “You taught us how to do your CPR, but I didn’t think you could actually bring someone back from the dead.”

Jake looks at the streetlights that are still on, at buildings whose residents are still asleep and thinks about the many patients he wasn’t able to resuscitate.

“It doesn’t always work. But I’m- glad- I could help William.”

_For you. I’m glad I could bring him back for you._

He doesn’t know what that means, what that says about him. Just knows that Pasta would be broken right now had Will died, whether he showed it or not, in some irreparable way. And he doesn’t know what that means and what it says about him but he is glad. 

“The others – they know I have a contact in the Leafs but no one knows who it is. What he is to me, and I need it to stay that way for Will’s safety. Do you understand?”

Jake does. He assures Pasta that he won’t tell anyone, not even Charlie, and he won’t.

Pasta looks at him again, this time for longer. His eyes are shining in the gray, early morning light and when he says ‘thank you’ Jake can feel the weight of it in his bones.

*

Pasta does the talking when they get back home, explains how the police got on their tail and they had to lay low for the night where they wouldn’t be found. Jake stands by him and nods dutifully where needed.

Pasta stretches when they are done talking business and yawns. “I could sleep for a decade,” he announces, “this one kept chattering at my ear the entire night.” His usual easy smile is back on his lips, an open expression on his face that assures whoever he is talking to that this is all there is to him – nothing more and nothing less. 

“I’m the one who should complain because you bored me to death,” Jake counters. His voice sounds hollow to his ears, the joke weak. His eyes dart over everyone in the room - no one looks like they can tell something is off; they are shaking their heads or smiling in their classic ‘that’s Jake for you’ way.  
A chill creeps up his spine as he wonders whether he knows any of them at all, these people he made a home with.

Whether he ever can.

**Author's Note:**

> What can I say, today is my birthday so I wrote myself some very self indulgent fic. It was meant to be a drabble and it's instead 4k and way too long for tumblr so here we are.
> 
> If you liked it give @discomob a look, and also drop me a line below! I thrive on comments!!
> 
> I'm also on tumblr @blindbatalex if you want to prompt me or just come and say hi


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